EAGAN, Minn. - Consumers' worries over
product safety are growing, according to an analysis by a major legal
information services provider, and consumers are
increasingly expressing those concerns in the form of lawsuits.

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In a survey of 1,000 American adults, with results accurate to plus-or-minus three percent, Thomson West research found:

-- 61 percent of Americans are worried or very worried about product safety -- 55 percent of Americans say they are more worried today about product safety than they were a year ago -- 73 percent of Americans have owned a recalled product: -- Automobiles - 42 percent -- Food - 27 percent -- Toys - 15 percent -- Home appliances - 9 percent -- Infant products - 9 percent -- Medicine - 7 percent -- What did you do with the recalled product(s)? -- Returned the product to the manufacturer or store for repair, replacement or refund - 65 percent -- Discarded the product - 35 percent -- Kept the product but stopped using it - 5 percent -- Nothing - kept the product and continued using it - 8 percent

Meanwhile, research shows that product liability
lawsuits filed in federal courts have been rising steadily, more than
doubling in the last five years. Cases filed reached a new high in 2006
with 28,274 cases filed in federal courts. Pharmaceutical companies
accounted for nearly half (47 percent) of product liability lawsuits
filed against businesses in federal courts since 2002, followed by
industrial manufacturing (14.5 percent), health care (5 percent),
chemicals (5 percent), construction (4 percent) and retail (4 percent).

Michael Brown, former executive director of the Consumer Product
Safety Commission and currently a principal at Brown & Gidding,
P.C., believes heightened consumer concerns about product safety may be
a result of greater consumer awareness, rather than a greater number of
unsafe products. "We generally have safer consumer products than we did
twenty years ago," said Brown. "But thanks to the Internet and other
forms of communications, we have greater awareness among consumers when
safety violations occur."

Brown, however, has concerns about the increasing globalization of
product manufacturing and the ability of government and corporations to
monitor product safety. "The Consumer Product Safety Commission is
woefully depleted, and needs additional staff and training to address
these concerns," said Brown. "At the same time, many of the large
multinational companies that have been involved in these high-profile
product recalls had safety standards and policies in place, but assumed
that suppliers and contract manufacturers halfway around the globe had
the same understanding to adhere to those standards in order to ensure
safe products."